Barbara Book (left) and Dianne Snyder compare notes while setting up the Users
Office to handle new demands for foreign user data. -- Photo by Reidar Hahn

With more than 50 roads and 100 buildings situated on 10 square miles,
Fermilab can easily overwhelm a first-time visitor. But the Fermilab Users
Center provides a home away from home.

"It's the first interface that users have with Fermilab," said Chris White,
professor at Illinois Institute of Technology and chairman of the Fermilab
Users Executive Committee. "Other than scientists, there are only a few other
people at the lab that users work with. Dianne is the face of the laboratory."

Dianne is Dianne Snyder, who has worked in the Users' Office for over
six years and took over as head of the office with the retirement of Pat Sorensen
in January. Snyder and Barb Book, who joined the office in March, function as
the "reference desk" at Fermilab, fielding questions ranging from badges to
computer accounts, from housing to safety training, from car rentals to medical
insurance, from maps and brochures to "Procedures for Experimenters" and
the Graduate Student Association's "Guide to Life at Fermilab."

DOE REQUESTS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Just two weeks after taking over the office, Snyder faced a baptism by fire.
A Department of Energy directive required national laboratories by April 4 to
collect additional data on all foreign visitors and verify their legal status in the
U.S., even those already living and working somewhere in the United States.
With Fermilab Associate Director for Administration Bruce Chrisman, Snyder
had to understand and implement the new DOE requirements.

The Users Office, headed by Dianne Snyder, is the first stop for every new user. Sooner or later all users, like Bruce Knuteson who has worked on Fermilab experiments for six years, return to the Office to obtain more information or to file additional paperwork. -- Photo by Reidar Hahn

"It was mind-boggling with all the changes," said Snyder, who has been at the
lab for almost 25 years. "We had appointments with users every fifteen minutes
and dealt with walk-ins at the same time. We had a stream of people,
sometimes 20 people deep, plus phone calls and emails about the new
requirements. We never have had a dull moment."

Snyder gathered and entered data for about 1,400 users, and was noted for
combining courtesy with efficiency.

"She took over the job just at the time that a huge new workload evolved, and
she's done a superb job," said assistant director Roy Rubinstein. "Though the
users weren't happy about the new requirements, they respected the way
that Dianne dealt with them."

CONTROVERSY OVER SPECIAL PROCEDUREFermilab doesn't carry out classified research, but the new DOE order
requires scientists born in, or with citizenship of, a country on the U.S. State
Department's list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism" to obtain authorization
before coming to the lab. The special procedure applies to all non-U.S.
citizens of or born in Cuba, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and Syria,
even if they are already in the United States on a valid visa.

Some users point out that even at the height of the Cold War the U.S.
allowed Russian scientists to work at Fermilab. Other scientists fear being
unable to attend the Lepton-Photon conference at Fermilab in August.
New DOE regulations raise
concerns among users
"In an open international scientific community, this
rubs people the wrong way," said White. "Our lab
is about inclusion, not exclusion. The current rules
make it hard for certain scientists to access the
lab simply due to where they were born, or their
citizenship. If we put too many barriers to scientific
access at Fermilab, users may decide to do their
research elsewhere, where there are fewer
impediments to free travel."

The Users Office, headed by Dianne Snyder, is the first stop for every new user. Sooner or later all users, like Bruce Knuteson who has worked on Fermilab experiments for six years, return to the Office to obtain more information or to file additional paperwork. -- Photo by Reidar Hahn

Meanwhile, the European research center CERN
has an existing collaboration with Iran, one of the
countries on the State Department list. The Iranian
government has agreed to contribute components
worth about $1.1 million to the CMS detector.
Two students from Iran are currently working
at CERN, and four scientists are constructing
hardware in Teheran. Fermilab manages the
U.S. DOE contributions to the CMS experiment
at CERN, and would have to obtain prior DOE
permission if Iranian collaborators wished to attend
a CMS conference at Fermilab.

"To the best extent we can, we deal with all users
the same way. We do not discriminate," said
Rubinstein. "We realize, if getting into Fermilab
remains difficult, experimenters might decide to
hold future collaboration meetings at universities
or other places outside Fermilab."

OTHER VISA PROBLEMS
Adding further complications are what seem to be
new policies on visa applications and renewals
that often hinder scientific collaboration.

"No existing U.S. visa is really appropriate
for long-term international collaboration that
requires non-U.S. users to frequently travel
to the U.S. over a long period of time," said
Chrisman. "The INS is restricting the use
of the B-1 visa that Fermilab visitors
frequently used. The next best thing,
the J-1 visa, poses problems of its
own. For non-U.S. users these are
big, big issues."

Visa problems for scientists
pre-date the changes effected after
September 11, 2001. The previous
month, the UEC had been sufficiently
concerned to conduct a survey
of users at several national
laboratories, resulting in a request
that the State Department introduce a new type
of visa for visiting scientists.

"Many U.S. agencies are interested in this idea,"
said Rubinstein. "But since 9/11 the emphasis
has been on security issues."

Heightened security concerns have slowed down
visa processing. For Fermilab employees and
users without U.S. citizenship, leaving the U.S. has
often resulted in delayed returns, prompting some
scientists to cancel their participation in meetings
outside the U.S. Hiring a scientist from a foreign
country is also more difficult.

"Weíve made job offers to non-U.S. citizens,"
said Chrisman. "There have been delays, and
the process takes up a lot of time of Fermilab
to deal with this."

John Marburger, director of the Office of Science
and Technology Policy and science advisor to
the President of the U.S., has spoken often about
the visa issue (see FERMINEWS, Vol. 26, No. 7,
April 25, 2003). At the Fermilab Usersí Meeting
on June 2, he spoke about it again to more than
400 Fermilab scientists.

"This is a very serious issue that my office is
working on every day," he said. "The good news
is that there is the consensus of international
collaboration. We are not rejecting people.
There is the practical problem of not making any
decision [on visa applications]. We must improve
this. Iím optimistic about solving it since it is clear
it needs to be resolved. We have to either do a
better job at dealing with this backlog or add more
people."

Either way, Snyder, Book and the Users Office will
be there to do whatís needed.